When K-12 schools closed their doors for in-person instruction in spring 2020, it had a variety of negative effects on students and teachers. It also shut off the training opportunities for future educators.  In response, states instituted a variety of short-term waivers allowing candidates to teach without fulfilling their normal requirements. Those policies helped candidates...

There is not one American public education system; the U.S. is a collection of 50 states, and those states have chosen to deliver public education using very different approaches. These choices manifest themselves in a variety of ways, including how much money states provide for their public schools, how many people work in those schools...

Objectively speaking, it’s a weird time to be talking about layoffs in schools. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2021 had the fewest layoffs in public education in the last two decades. Last year was just a bit higher, and so far 2023 is tracking about the same. There are still pockets of layoffs due to...

If I asked you to picture a new teacher, you might imagine someone just out of college who recently finished student-teaching and now, at age 22 or 23, is starting a full-time job in a district nearby. That is one common path, but it’s far from the only one. In fact, teachers follow a wide...

I’m writing this for all the parents out there: Don’t leave your child’s reading success to chance. I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I was one of those parents. Sure, my wife and I read to our son every night, and we had plenty of books, newspapers and magazines around the house. Our local public...

Just before the winter holidays, the National Center for Education Statistics released new data on school staffing in the 2021-22 academic year. The data are provisional, but they represent the best look yet at how school staffing levels have changed over the course of the pandemic.  As I forecast in September, the new data show that schools have been...

It’s a weird time to be having a national conversation about teacher shortages. Thanks in part to the surge of federal relief funds, schools have ambitious hiring plans — but they have been unable to bring on as many people as they would like. As of last month, job openings remain elevated well above normal levels. And yet,...

Reading is freedom. It opens up the world.  In my day job as an education researcher, I know that too many kids never learn to read well. Kids who don’t learn to read fluently by 3rd grade will struggle as the material gets more complex.  That fact hit home this spring when I noticed my 8-year-old son had...

A year ago, school districts wrote plans for how they were going to use their share of the $122 billion in American Rescue Plan money. Fast forward to today, and information is starting to emerge about how schools are actually spending their windfalls. Martha’s Vineyard Public Schools in Massachusetts has already spent all of its nearly $400,000...

Thanks to a surprisingly strong state budget and a $15 billion infusion courtesy of the federal government, school districts across California are now flush with cash. But if district leaders aren’t careful now, they could trigger a round of painful cuts in the very near future. Consider the case of San Diego Unified (SDU). Student...